Do you get emails from people you don’t know, asking you to do link exchanges with them? If you do, before you decide to do the exchange, please consider the following very carefully.

Link Exchanges: A brief overview

The reason people want you to exchange links with them is simple: The more links pointing to a site, the higher it will rank with Google and Co.

In fact, the number (and quality) of links pointing to your site, is the single most important part of your SEO (search engine optimization). So, SEO companies regularly send emails to thousands of people asking for links, hoping to increase the number and quality of links that point to their customer’s websites and blogs. Usually, the higher your Google Page Rank, the more requests you will get.

Link exchanges: The risks

Link exchanges and the old “Switcheroo”: Increasingly, people are building what look like regular websites and asking for link exchanges. Then, after a set number have been gathered, the site is transformed into a scam site.

This switch tactic is starting to gather pace and as I will explain in a moment, it’s not a good idea for you to link to sites, which Google considers “spammy”, as they call it. If you HAVE already offered links to people you do not know, it might be worth checking their site out again.

Link exchanges into bad neighbourhoods: Linking to the wrong kind of sites can also see YOUR site penalised (see below.) Bad neighbourhoods exist on the Internet, just like they do in the off-line world. In online terms, a bad neighbourhood is a site that is considered by the search engines to be spammy or dubious in some way.

Google does not like link exchanges: If you want to attract visitors from Google, you need to know that Google considers link exchange schemes as a violation of their guidelines and that they will penalise sites, which they believe are involved in them. You can learn about Google’s policy on link exchanges here – Along with a link that you can use to resubmit your site, if you are already being penalised.

Why is Google so strict on these exchanges? It sees them as a way of deliberately trying to manipulate their page ranking system. This system is how they deliver search results, and those results are what keep people using Google – and allows Google to make the BIG advertising bucks!

Legitimate linking?

The general consensus is you should link to people, when appropriate for what YOU want to achieve. If you want to share other sites, posts, articles or online resources – link to them.

Where do I stand on this?

I get link exchange emails at least half a dozen times every day and I delete them.

Why?

Because I refuse to associate my name or reputation with someone I don’t know. I don’t really care what Google thinks about my blog, but I DO care passionately about the 15 years I have spent building my business and my brand and I won’t risk negatively impacting that.

Ultimately, you need to do what you believe is right for what YOU want to achieve. I just think it’s useful to have some additional info, so the next time you get a link exchange request, you can make the right judgement for YOU – NOT the other guy!

There has been a lot of talk in recent weeks, about probable changes to the way that Google ranks search engine results. The general belief is that mentions (links) to your site from social media sites are starting to play a bigger role in where Google ranks you.

Because of the secrecy that surrounds Google’s algorithm, it’s not possible to say definitively what kind of additional influence this is having on search results. However, it now seems increasingly likely that links from places like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Linkedin etc may be carrying influence with Google. This post on Mike Moran’s SEO blog by Chris Angus, explains the impact of social networks on SEO nicely and in plain English too (Kudos Mike.)

Whilst the number of pages / sites linking to you is still the key factor in your overall visibility, it seems that mentions on social media sites are starting to be used as a form of additional verification. It has been clear for some time that Google understands the importance of the communications shared across social networks. This is why they added Tweets and shares from other networks, in their search results some months ago.

Failings with the current system are obvious. A good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) provider can get a site of average value thousands of places above a poorly optimised site, with great value content. This is why so much superb content goes undiscovered and why we often find results for searches that are disappointing. Clearly, Google is keen to try and address this issue, though I can’t see their latest initiative changing things much.

Why?

Good SEO providers are already adapting their strategies and incorporating social media as part of their SEO mix. As soon as Google changes their algorithm (or it is believed they have), the SEO guys change too. These SEO’s are masters of testing and measuring. If they see that incorporating social media or social bookmarking is boosting search rankings, they simply add it to their SEO tool kit .

Bottom line: Today AND for the foreseeable future, great content backed up with solid SEO are a vital part of gaining visibility for your site. High value content will keep people coming back for more and encourage them to recommend you, but they need to find you in the first place. Embracing social media has always been a good idea, but perhaps even more so now.

For most of us, the answer will be in the thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or more. Right now, this represents a challenge for a growing number of consultants, entrepreneurs, trainers and authors etc, who trade or work in their own names. That’s because right now, it’s almost impossible for them to register their name on social networks or to buy theirname.com.

Whilst there is something nice about owning yourname.com, there are also a number of good reasons why it’s useful for some people to own a version of their name online. For example, if you are an advisor and trade in your name, it’s easier for people to remember your URL / web address, if it’s yourname.com.

Also, as Gina Trapani, the founding Editor of lifehacker.com recently pointed out, there are some great SEO benefits from owning at least one version of your own name online, IF people are likely to be searching for you, by name. I experienced this myself, when I used JimConnolly.com as my primary website and was the number one result on Google for anyone searching for me.

Social media name grab

Until quite recently, it was pretty easy to get yourname.com. I was able to buy JimConnolly.com with zero effort at the first attempt. However, in more recent years the Internet “got social.” Today, hundreds of millions of people are building social networks and blogging. For example, I was the first Jim Connolly to register their name on Twitter, so when my friend, who’s ALSO called Jim Connolly (From Thomas, Connolly & Phelps in Bloomington Illinois) joined Twitter, “his” name was taken.

To resolve this name issue, there are stories of people creating unique names for their unborn children, so that they can get them their own .com address and social media accounts!

Some possible answers

Here are a few suggestions for businesspeople, who do not already own their own name based URL, but would like to:

The most obvious suggestion, is for you to check now if your name is actually taken. This is especially the case, if your name is uncommon or uses an uncommon spelling. Even if your name was not available the last time you looked, it could be now. I use 123Reg.co.uk to check URL availability. By the way, that is NOT an affiliate link. It’s just a service I use.

You can also try and get an alternative to the .com top level domain or TLD. For example; yourname.me, yourname.biz, yourname.org etc. However, some TLD’s come with restrictions on how you can use them, so check before you buy.

Another suggestion is to get creative and add something to your name, such as JaneSmithMarketing.com or MrBobSmith.com or Mary JonesOnline.com etc. This is still pretty effective and provides an easy to remember option, when giving out your web address to people you meet or in radio interviews etc.

So, what if even the most creative versions of your name are taken?

Don’t panic!

As you can see, even though I own JimConnnolly.com, I still choose not to use it here on my primary marketing website.

Why?

By including the words marketing blog in the URL of this site, almost every link that points here also includes those 2 words. This means there are thousands of links, which point here and tell Google that this is a marketing blog. As a result, anyone searching for marketing blog or marketing blogs etc on Google, will find this blog on page one; even though there are over 100 MILLION results listed. It’s also pretty easy to find me here using Google, just searching for Jim Connolly. BTW: Keep an eye on JimConnolly.com!!

With the annual price of a URL around the same as a quick trip to Starbucks, there’s no reason for business owners not to try and get at least one version of their name. Even if it’s not something you plan to use immediately, it could prove useful for a future project.

Several times a week, I get email from people, who claim to enjoy reading this blog and want to know if they can be one of my guest bloggers. Clearly, they have never read the blog, as there is no guest blogging here. (The clue is in the blog’s name!)

Several times a day, I get email from people, telling me they enjoy reading my blog and would like me to link to them. Clearly, they have never visited the blog, or they would know there are no link-exchanges here. I link to a few sites, all of which are owned by people I know and trust. NONE of them asked for the link. BTW: I just added Danny Brown’s blog to my links (Get well soon Danny!)

In yesterday’s blog post, I wrote about the mindset that says it’s ok to piss-off 99.9% of people you contact, to reach that 0.1%, who may listen to or read your message. That post was about cold calls from unprofessional tele-marketers, but the same applies to other forms of impersonal, mass produced junk marketing too.

…and the best part?

The massive majority of email I receive, asking for links and postings, comes from marketing companies or SEO / SEM (search engine marketing) companies; on behalf of their clients and in their client’s name! It’s their client’s reputations that are being rendered toxic – and I’m willing to bet that in many cases, their clients don’t even know the damage being caused to their name or brand.

Have you noticed how some of the people who comment here, do so without using their name? The reason you are seeing this, is because they are trying to build links back to their websites or blogs, which contain anchor text, that will help their SEO.

From an SEO perspective, this can be effective, however, by commenting with a marketing phrase, which does not include their name at all, it makes the comments seem impersonal.

It’s hard for the readers or myself to build a dialogue or connect with someone in the comments, who calls himself “Cheap PC Spares!”

I like to see commenters here include their name or nickname in the anchor text they use when commenting, not just a SEO friendly phrase. Especially as this blog uses CommentLuv, which will include a contextual hyperlink back to your blog or website, every time you comment here anyway!

In future, if you want a comment published here, please include your name or even a nickname or your company name. Feel free to include some SEO friendly words if you want to, but let the readers know there’s a real person there too.

I’ve had a few emails this week, after technorati.com ranked this blog inside the world’s top 10 small business blogs for the first time.

Whilst this ranking will go up and down all the time, to have actually reached that spot is quite an achievement, for a marketing blog that’s little over a year old.

People wrote to me wanting to know how I did it, so here’s my secret!

I write exclusively for people – NOT Google!

Ask any top marketing writer (or copy writer) and they will tell you that it’s a challenge to produce material, which inspires people to take action, to; buy from you, visit you, call you, share your work, click links or email you etc. That’s because people are complex.

As a marketer, people need to find your message both interesting and motivating and that’s no easy task – Especially if you are simultaneously trying to write that same message so that Google’s search engine software likes it!

So, here’s my secret sauce for a top 10 blog

This blog is read by people, enjoyed by people and designed to help people. If I get enough genuinely useful content onto this blog, people will share my work and people will link to this blog, allowing me to reach more people. By repeating that process, people have increased the profile of this blog and it’s readership.

Notice a common thread there?

Yep – it’s all about writing for people!

I love SEO – But I write exclusively for YOU

I don’t try and get certain keywords or phrases into my posts, to score highly with search engines. If I did, it would change the way I write and dilute the effectiveness of what I share with you. As a result, 100% of what you read here is written exclusively for people.

Ironically, by writing exclusively for people, I have attracted around 16,000 links to this blog, which has gifted me a pretty good search engine ranking for many key marketing terms. For instance, people going to Google searching for marketing blogs will have been able to find this blog on page 1 for the search term; “marketing blogs” for the past 6 months.

In my experience, many bloggers spend way too much time ‘optimizing’ their material for search engines and looking for that one killer trick that will magically send their website / blog to the top of the pile.

While they are waiting for that quick fix, you and I can focus on delivering the best content we can, to people.

Thank YOU!

I would like to personally thank EVERYONE who reads this blog, links to it and shares it with their friends. As you can see, without your support, this blog is nothing.

Let’s work together and grow your business. To find out more click here!